There are two primary styles of mainstream bloggers: conduits, and originators. Conduits help digest, funnel and channel helpful information. Originators come up with new thoughts, observations, perspectives and points of view. It’s far less risky to be a conduit. Sure, it takes work seeking out and filtering information. But sharing information that’s been created by others doesn’t require you to put your ego, your self, your opinions and thought processes on the line like being an originator does.

Conduits find interesting and relevant content and pass it along in the form of blog posts, how-tos, links, lists, reviews and tweets. Conduits can be incredibly helpful in helping us find and filter out important nuggets of information. Necessary even. There’s so much info out there in any given field, especially for those of us in the internet/social media business, that no one can possibly keep up with it all.

Conduits at their best create lively and important forums that may themselves become buzzwords for new trends--”meta-conduits,” we might say. Huffingtonpost.com in news and commentary, mashable.com for web and social media info, lifehacker.com for DIY tips—all of these lively and informative sources of information perform an enormous service. Many of us come to rely on them. And meta-conduit sites can create considerable wealth and attention for their owners.

Originators, on the other hand, help us think and see differently by sharing their experiences, thoughts, reflections and perspectives. Help clarify the blur of daily life.

At their best, originators can become not just trend-setters, but thought-shapers. People like Mark Silver at heartofbusiness.com, Nancy Humphreys at brucenomics.com or Steve Pavlina at stevepavlina.com are people who think and feel deeply about business development and spiritual growth, or what’s really happening in the global economy and why, or how to live a rewarding life. They may have huge personal followings and write on a regular basis for other blogs than their own. Or they may not (yet).

But they’re more than mere conduits. They see and digest the same information as the rest of us do. But before sending it back out, they think. Cogitate. Feel. Process. And when they write, they often share something of striking intelligence or wisdom. It might just change your thinking, or your life.

Are you a conduit or an originator?

Most of us are somewhere on a continuum. We’re a bit of both. On my “on” days, and when I have time, I try to share an original thought. On my “off” or super-busy days, it’s all I can do to find something interesting on the net and share a link. But I always think about it. Because for me, being a conduit is the easy way out. It’s second-best. It’s not challenging me to do my best work, or to be my best self, or to contribute all that I can.

But maybe I’m prejudiced. Making this all harder than it needs to be. What do you think? Which are you and which do you want to be? How do you want your blog to contribute to the world we all share?

Imagine that instead of looking at an online street map, you’re looking at “real reality” through a special high-tech set of glasses. As you look at the objects around you, you see pieces of information visually super-imposed upon their images. Look at a building, and you suddenly see, in print that appears in your visual field, when the structure was built, who owns it, how many units it has, whether it’s for sale, its latest property tax assessment. Look at a person, and the device displays what social networks she or he belongs to to, their CV, publications, workplace, position, etc. Focus on a print publication, and your visual display might automatically pull up photos, videos, maps and wikipedia entries directly related to the topic. And, you can “click” any of these informational displays to dig deeper.

Can you imagine living 24/7 in this kind of “total information awareness,” where the real world is not just hard, unyielding and impenetrable—instead, it’s laden with hidden dimensions and information? It would feel like having ESP, or X-ray vision, or a perpetual personal research assistant.

Think this sounds a bit futuristic? Not by much.  Check in out here, http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2009/09/20/three-videos-of-augmented-reality-for-business/.

How Will Augmented Reality Change Your Business?

Usually, successful early innovators become rich. Who will they be? Think about it. Who is poised to combine the most online data with the most advanced and ubiquitous geographic database around? If you’re saying “Google,” I’m with you. So, number one, we all might consider buying stock in the Big G. And creative entrepreneurs and programmers who know how Google works, and are able to use it, will have a huge opportunity to become very innovative.

Secondly, if your business web site is “googleized” now (Google Sites, Google Analytics, Google Toolbar, etc.), you can bet that any data they have on you will be deployed via… what shall we call it, Google Reality? I have a hunch we’ll all want to be much more careful about managing our business information.

Third, remember those thick old things called phone books? If we haven’t already tossed ‘em, we might as well. Imagine layers of geographically keyed business information that is visually accessible merely by “looking” at a storefront or street. This info may be offered by different, competing networks to start with. Who will your business pay, and how much, to be listed?

Does your business have a storefront? Is it urban, rural, in a mall? It’s easy to imagine lesser-trafficked and rural areas being informational backwaters. But will parts of cities be “off the information grid” because they’re commercially dead? The disincentives for locating a business in an “information ghetto” might shift entire trajectories of urban growth and development.

What about businesses that are mostly virtual already? Right now, your business is probably turning to Facebook, Linked In, Twitter, etc. These networks currently have rudimentary communications and connections among them. Imagine total integration and ready accessibility. What information about our business do we put out there, and how much control do we have over it? How much personal information do we want visible, and will we have any control over that? What information already is online, and will be mined and displayed to all comers, with no digging necessary? This issue isn’t going away, and it’s going to get worse.

And finally, certain occupations could become totally transformed. Buying, selling, and developing real estate. Web design. Advertising. Information sciences. Teaching. Probably your own occupation, once you start thinking about it.

The Uh-Oh Factor

On the minus side, it’s all too easy to imagine everyone being implanted with a readable chip containing personal information, financial data, medical history, current location… so, walk down the street, and any anyone with appropriate access or equipment can “see” who you are and what your info is. Medical emergency? The EMTs “see” your previous medical issues—and even your current vitals—as they visually assess you. Credit check? A bank merely obtains clearance to read your chip.

In terms of privacy, “identity theft” might not be a metaphor anymore. Can you imagine it? “Oh my god, I’ve been hacked!”

I can easily visualize a whole generation of folks slipping ever-deeper into this seductive information soup, swimming in it comfortably and competently…  and in the process unknowingly, or uncaringly, sacrificing yet another layer of that quaint old right called privacy.

What’s Next?

Have you been left in the dust by technology already? Have you missed being an “early adopter” of the last “big thing” that came along and transformed the business landscape? This might be your chance to make up for it. New business and social models will arise that we can’t even imagine today. Which is why now is the time to start imagining them.

Want to see what augmented reality might look like? Take a look at these three short videos:

Augmented Reality in Education

Augmented Reality in Business—Social Data

Read more about augmented reality here:

Augmented Reality for BART Users in San Francisco
Augmented Reality Now, on Your I-Phone
Augmented Reality is Coming… And It Will Change Your Business

Share what you think about where this could go.

One of the best marketing consultants in the business just used Twitter to ruin his brand.

This is a guy who has been the model of small-business marketing integrity for me, and thousands of others. I’ve bought his products, subscribed to his newsletter, been his follower. And then he sent out these tweets:

LOOOOK!!! If you want more followers check out this site: http://EasyFollowers.com
about 14 hours ago

HEEEYYYY PEOPLE!!! Want more followers? Check out this site!!:
http://EasyFollowers.com
about 16 hours ago

ARE YOU KIDDING ME!! I love this site! I just got so many followers: http://EasyFollowers.com
about 18 hours ago

HOLY MOLY if you want more followers you need to check this site out: http://EasyFollowers.com

My first thought? Hmm, that’s odd, he doesn’t usually talk like this, or repeat himself. But if this guy, whose work I respect so much, recommends this site, I’d better check it out. Of course I want more Twitter followers! But a niggling suspicion still bugged me. The capitalization, hokey language, multiple exclamation points, and repetition were very uncharacteristic of this person. Was this for real, or had his account been hijacked, or what?

I went to easyfollowers.com. It’s a membership site; you have to log in with your Twitter account info to get in the first time. It says on the home page that there are two levels of membership, “VIP” and free. There were only 13 VIP members when I checked… so VIP membership must cost a bundle. But you can’t find out how much it costs without using your Twitter login to sign up, and agreeing to the Terms of Service (a link in very pale print, already conveniently auto-checked).

What are the terms of service? Whoa. It’s a short document that sounds like the Twilight Zone. You have to relinquish control of your Twitter account. Here are the TOS, complete with typos:

1. You agree to submit your twitter accout [sic] credentials.

2. You agree to allow us to store your account information in our database.

3. You agree your account will be used to automatically tweet an update on your account for promotional purposes every 4 hours with the exception of VIP members. [Note that the account above tweets a message every TWO hours.]

4. You agree upon loging [sic] in you allow us tweet an update on your twitter for promotion.

5. You agree when buying vip there are no refunds or returns what so ever [sic].

6. You agree to allow us up to 6 hours to put your twitter user name on the vip section.

7. You agree if you spam our site you will be banned from our service forever with out hesitation.

Bad spelling aside (would I want these guys tweeting typos under my name?), why would I give up control of my own Twitter account, even if it netted me hundreds of “followers”? And I still didn’t understand how on earth could I gain followers by spamming them.

Another click led me to the “About” section. Here I found the following description of the service.

“… Here you will gain more followers for your account. This concept is quit [sic] simple and works very well. The 1st thing you will need to do is login your account (The same info as your twitter credentials) Then after loging [sic] in your [sic] taken to page with a list of vip members and regular members. The vip members are paid members and will gain the most followers on our site. Right now vip members are getting anywhere betwenn [sic] 400-1500 followers a day. The regular members are free members. Before anyone can join this site you are obligated to click and follow all the vip members and the last 20 regular members. After doing the following you can then join the site to get more followers.”

Aha! A pyramid scheme. But… if you’re just a free member, doesn’t that mean you would just get 20 followers before your name cycled out of the last 20 on the list? And many of them, surely, would unfollow you as soon as they get out of Easy Follower. What good is that? It seems to me that they’re casting an awfully wide net to get free members who then make the VIP membership a paying proposition. And VIP members would probably get hundreds if not thousands of coerced “followers,” regardless of the content of their stream.

I think this is both sleazy and counterproductive. Pyramid schemes are called that for a reason: they generally “work” for the first people who sign up, but not for the later ones. The ones at the tip-top profit from the greed and credulity of the suckers below… who end up getting ripped off. Case in point: the rise and fall of Bernie Madoff and his investors.

And then there’s the question of quantity versus quality. We’re bombarded with quantity-based marketing all the time, and we tend to hate it, or at best, ignore it. When sheer numbers matter most, we get junk mail in our home and business mailboxes, spam in our email boxes, and stupid repetitive tweets from people we might have respected. We’re treated like mindless drones. We all know the yucky, impatient, dismissive feeling this engenders all too well.

And the marketing guru whose work I so respected, until last Friday… he even had a written Twitter policy upon which I modeled my own. It would not permit him to engage in this kind of sleazy scheme! (Did they pay him? Did he not read the TOS? Could he really be that desperate?) Well, he shall still remain nameless for now. I unfollowed him. But I’m hoping he’ll come to his senses and admit a terrible mistake. And I suggest everyone else boycott easyfollowers.com, too. Unless you want more of this kind of sleazy s*** on the net!

Are you sick of hearing about Twitter? I know I am. So here’s a different image, from the movie “A River Runs Through It.” Recall those gorgeous shots where everything is sun-gilded and glowing? The water sparkles. The man (Brad Pitt, as it happens) casts, and the line snakes gracefully into the air and lands delicately on the reflective surface of the river. That’s what we’re doing here. Fly-fishing. Every tweet is  a lure that lands ever so gently on the water. We’re very lucky fisherfolk, too. We reel in a fish, or two or three, or a dozen, every time we send the line out. And the best part: no hours of standing on wet rocks. Just five minutes a day of quick brainwork, and type a few characters.

Here’s how.

1. Sign up for Twitter using a separate account and user name for the site or blog you want to promote.

2. Under the “Settings” link on your new Twitter page, make sure that the box “Protect my updates” (near the bottom of the page) is NOT checked.

3. Open another browser window and sign up for a free account at snipurl. You’re doing this for 2 reasons. Snipurl shortens URLs so they fit easily into a Twitter post, and it also lets you track how many clicks each link gets. You can use this information over time to see what your readers are most interested in, and give them more of it.

4. Decide what page or post on your blog you want to promote. Copy the link, and paste it into snipurl to shorten it (make sure you’re logged in first). Copy the shortened version of the URL and use it in Step 5.

5. In one short sentence, say what the reader will gain or learn from your blog post or web page that will help them in their lives or business.

The jargon for this is “adding value.” Marketing guru Robert Middleton says this about adding value:

When your focus is the welfare of others, you win every single time. If I write an article or an eZine, if I give a talk, or help a client, if I share a realization or a strategy, it’s all about making a difference….Businesses based on this principle thrive.

Share something with your followers (and anyone else who might search Twitter for information on your topic) that helps them solve the problem your business exists to remedy. Try to use a keyword or two. This one sentence will be your “tweet.”

Do NOT say what you had for breakfast, that you’re on your way to a dentist appointment, or that you’re having trouble finding a parking space! The point here is to give people something useful, helpful or entertaining. Also do not try to hard-sell anything. That’s not the point either.

For example, a useless tweet (for our purposes): “Stuck in traffic in the rain, commuting really sucks.” True, but not helpful.

An obnoxious tweet: “Buy my incredible product X [fill in the blank] now.” Just plain bad sales technique, anyway. (For more on how to identify Twitter spam, check out Bernard Moon’s post at Mashable.)

A tweet that adds value for my audience of business web site owners: “18 reasons to choose WordPress for your blog or non-blog web site, new post at http://sn.im/iaxm3”

6. Type or paste your tweet into the box at the top of your Twitter page where it says “what are you doing.” Add the “snipped” link from step 4. Press the “update” button.

Do this once every weekday. If you temporarily run out of new material to tweet about, link to a helpful, related post on someone else’s blog.

Voila. That’s it. You don’t need to understand Twitter. You don’t need to follow anybody until you want to. And, you don’t need to worry about who’s following you. Just track your site statistics, and watch your traffic stats improve. And enjoy the river.